


Sick Individuals

by Irmolin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irmolin/pseuds/Irmolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi Pyrope is cold as a razor blade and smooth as the cut it leaves, and she'll have Karkat Vantas on his knees before the day is done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Individuals

It is in the finale of the games that you finally face her, and she’s like a shrunken giant, hidden in a body sharp and edgy to deceive the viewer lulling them into a fake sense of control. In contrast to the other contestants she is smiling like it’s twelfth perigee morning and her mouth is like a dragons. It kind of terrifies you.

She rides real good. Her board is batshit fast, you think it might be a Neophyte Calibrator 7, and it’s been painted flashy red with a messy teal libra sign splitting the secure foothold around her scrawny ankles and the motor spitting a bush if hot fire in her trail. She flashes across the star-studded firmament like you’ve seen lightning bolts do, brutally shattering the sky in a blur of mutant red and teal speed stretches, she spins like a record and dives like she was falling.

Your monochrome board shakes and jerks underneath you, but your black skating boots are carefully fastened to it and it’s caused a greater deal of trouble before, so you feel you’ll be able to get it under control, if you could just stop looking at fucking Pyrope. The manic cackling doesn’t help, it’s so loud not even the roar of both your motors manage to drown it.

  
“And just as yesterday our newcomer miss Pyrope takes the games with storm, catching up on Vantas by the minute!” the commentator exclaims as you skid left through the slick air. She’s just feet behind you.  
You feel as if she is breathing hot and wet down your neck but that would be impossible. If you weren’t wearing goggles the sharp horns poking out of her helmet could probably put your eye just by looking at them. Before you Peixes has her braids tucked in tightly to her head under the fuchsia helmet, glittering with splendid gold trails running into seaweed-looking patterns.

  
You rip through the sky with the sound of tearing fabric and the feeling of adrenaline pumping your body into soaring flight as she comes up to your side, but doesn’t fly past you. It really unsettling. She greets you with an ear-to-ear toothy grin, her awful fangs thankfully kept under somewhat control by thin black lips. You greet her with a mental fuck off.

  
She holds herself perfectly on the board, knees slightly bent and arms held into a hovering position around her slender waist, her right foot forwards, turning her to face you.  
“Pyrope appears to be slowing down next to Vantas and while her intensions remain unclear, the race continues at a lightsome pace with Peixes in the lead-“  
Okay, it’s not only awkward but shameful that she has to go slower to fly with you, you gotta step up your game to this newbie chick with limbs like knives, so you speed away around the next turn witch unexpectedly bends into a loop framed by electric lights.  
You lean forward. Twisting, curling around yourself you rise, riding up to meet the edge of glory.

  
But not with her.

Fuck no. She doesn’t miss a beat despite the fact that she’s still staring at you as she angles her feet flawlessly to roam upward carried by the magnificent wave of flames, she pulls her thighs to her stomach and shrieks with joy at the top. Gravity has no meaning. The air that pulled on her suit lets go. She could be a bird.

—-

“Hey, Terezi Pyrope was it?” you call across the empty dressing room. You don’t really have to ask.

“That would be my name”, she smiles into the empty space between her and the wall she’s facing. You hadn’t known about her eyes before she won the final raze, and when you saw them for real they pierced through you like no seeing eyes ever could. They are a burning scarlet, like traffic lights against her light grey skin.

“It’s like that one other, uh, she who holds the world record in air skating, Latun…a, something?” Terezi shoves her skintight suit into her ridiculously huge bag. “Wasn’t she a teal blood, too?”

“You mean my sister?” she asks absently.

“Your what”.

“My sister!” Her face is lit up with another unpleasant smile as she pulls the strap of her bag over a bony shoulder, giving the world another eyeful of those killer-reptile/hyena/vampire fangs hiding like predators in her dark, wet mouth.

Hah. Ok yeah stop thinking about her mouth.

“Right.” you say distrustfully instead. “You think I’ll swallow any grubshit like it’s spoon-fed Nutella?”

“I think you’d know truth when you hear it.”

She winks at you.

\--

You offer her a cigarette as the suns are setting upon the harbour, and she appears almost offended. It stings a bit.

“All that sugar candy cane blood is gonna get all musky with bitter and yucky dry smoke!” she says, sounding pretty upset. “How do you expect me to smell that handsome face of yours when it reeks like shit?”

Oh right, you forgot she apparently smells her way through the world because she’s some kind of nose-psychic maniac. You were just trying to be nice.

“Fine, whatever, I won’t fucking light it then”, you mutter.

You sit and talk for hours like you don’t have anything more important to do, you tell her about home, about your first board, about all the skies you’ve seen and reckless things you’ve done, about crab dad and Slick and Kankri.

“Who’s Kankri?” Terezi asks, and leans back on her elbows, head turned up.

“The worst goddamn brother I could have ever wished for”, you sigh.

“Tell me everything”, she says.

A robust blue blood climbs ashore swiftly on a rope tied between her onyx space ship and the dock, shouting eagerly to her comrades up on deck. The suns blend their colours and paint the sky like artists in gold and red and jade, and the clouds are spun in violet and Terezi’s black hair shines in the evening.

She’s less scary this way, smaller and gentler than she was towering atop the flames of her board and free falling into space like a comet, and it’s almost hard for you to grasp how she can even interact normally with her environment. When you saw her tumble to the ground, arms thrown high above her and mouth wide in a cry of victory, it felt as if the air couldn’t press against her skin, and the ground quaked as she walked it. You felt like she could crush everything in her way in that suit and her helmet, it’s as if she was born on the board. And you don’t suspect a thing.


End file.
